Following Trainers In Form
How much importance do you put on a trainer being in form or in top form?
If you see a trainer at the top of the hot trainers list or see one that has had 4 winners from their last 10 runners and a 40% strike rate in the last 14 days, are you inclined to see what horses they are running today and almost back them blindly?
There will always be a number of top trainers who rarely have a lower strike rate than 25% all year round, due to the fact that they have a stable full of top class horses and a large number of them at that.
You do also get the case when a smaller yard just can't seem to do anything wrong and horses are going in at all prices for what seems like no particular reason at all.
Of course you hear about the feel good factor in a yard and perhaps that passes on to the animals, or a recent virus the yard had, goes away and all of the horses just feel fit again and are just raring to go.
Lets look at some stats and results
In the image below I have used the system builder to look for all trainers since the start of 2018, who on the day of racing, had a 30% or better strike rate and at least 3 winners, from all of their runners over the previous 14 days.
(You can click all images to enlarge them).
The first thing that will stand out to you is the massive loss of over 1,500 pts to BSP and this includes runners at all prices. As you can see, there was a biggest winner at 110.0.
Remember these are trainers who at the time were bang in form!
Reducing the biggest BSP to 21.0, still leaves a loss of over 900 pts and just taking all horses that were BSP favourites, second favourites or third favourites, gave a loss of over 300 pts.
If you chose to lay these first three favs on Betfair, there was still a loss of over 70 pts and while there were some areas you could look at like Horse Age, Horse Sex and BSP to turn a small profit, to make anything profitable you would have to massively reduce the number of bets for still a measly profit over what is nearly five years.
I think quite a few people will be a little bit surprised by this set of results, I certainly was as you always hear when a big winner goes in and the commentator tells you that the yard is is such blistering form right now, that even the stable cat could win.
These sort of comments stick with you and you think that getting on when the trainers are on a hot streak should be the way to make money, but clearly it is not the case at all.
Even just backing those at bigger odds, (BSP of 25 or bigger), still gives an overral loss of nearly 600 pts, plus a longest losing run of 297!
I then reduced the strike rate to between 20% and 25% and just one winner in the last 14 days, to see if you could maybe catch the start of a better run but the loss was still over 3,000 pts.
Are there any areas that could turn this into a profit?
Of course you can play about with the winning strike rate and number of winners on the system builder yourself, but I think most people would suggest that at least three winners and a 30% strike rate or better would certainly suggest that the trainer is bang in form.
There are also quite a number of runners every day where a trainer has stats like these or similar.
Yesterday there were just two very average meetings at Hereford and Wetherby and there were 6 horses with trainers that qualified on my percentage and number of winners in the last 14 days and all six got beaten.
Looking at race type, then the strike rate is very similar between the all weather, flat turf, chase and hurdle races, whilst NHF races had a the worst winning percentage but the least loss of all.
Handicaps or non handicaps as well as different race class, showed no difference at all in losses or strike rates, whilst horses 11 years and older would give a small profit but from a minimal number of bets
Just betting when the going was Firm or Heavy gave a 200 pt profit and whilst I suppose you can understand why these extreme conditions could improve results, it would not be enough for me to want to follow.
Even trying to make something out of the BSP odds of all runners would be almost impossible, as you can see by the table of results below.
So what about the Trainers themselves?
If you look at the next table below, this has been sorted by the number of runners a trainer has had, when he was on a winning streak of 30% or better and had 3 or more winners, during the previous 14 days.
I have cut this off to just show the fifteen with the most runs.
So at the top you can see Charlie Applebey who has had 200 winners from 679 runners and a near 30% strike rate but still shows an overall loss.
Most of what you would consider to be the big yards are within this group of fifteen as they unsurprisingly have more horses to run and would have more 14 day winning streaks because of the quality of the horses in their yards.
However most of these still show a loss overrall.
Trainers who have made a profit
If we then sort the table by those who have made a profit and take the top 30, then you could possibly be on to something.
You could say that these 30 trainers are consistent whenever the yard is in form perhaps? Or that they have generally fewer horses and are more selective about where they run them?
Some of the trainers on this list you would know as 'plotters' so it could be that these are the ones who consider the racing programme very carefully and make their plans a long way before they start running these winning horses.
The yard itself can then build up a very good strike rate and keep this going for a couple of weeks or more.
You can see the summary of results and yearly profit breakdown when using just these 30 trainers, on the images below.
If you want to run this yourself and use it as a system to follow, then open the system builder and put in the two trainer since 14 days rules shown at the top of the page.
Apply the rules and then go to the list of trainers in the result breakdowns near the bottom.
Sort by the BSP Profit column (click twice to get the most profit at the top), then add these names to the two rules you started with.
It will look like the next image and you can input the list of Trainers where the red box is.
(Check out the video further on for a quick way to do this).
Video
You can take a look at this quick three minute video to see how to add a long list of names to the system builder, rather than having to add them separately.
Summary
So would this post make you think again about finding and backing trainers in form? It comes to something when you can't even make a profit following the hot yards!
Of course filtering these results and trainers can unearth something and that list of the top thirty that have shown a profit could be somewhere to start.
What you could do is find a few trainers and just look into their overrall performance and see if they have a speciality at the distance or time of year and just follow these when it looks like they could have a horse that is ready to win.
Specialising is a good way of narrowing down your bets and then you can start to understand more about your chosen niche, whether it be a set of trainers or even a range of race distances.
If you want to see another system concerning Trainers in Handicaps then click here now >>
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